Trinity United Methodist Church

The university this congregation helped organize began as night classes. In 1925 Wiley College, the Methodist school at Marshall, started extension courses for Black teachers at Houston's Black high school with school board support. On March 7, 1927, the board created Houston Colored Junior College, which opened that June with 75 students meeting evenings at Jack Yates High School. In 1947, with Heman Sweatt suing the University of Texas, the state took it over as Texas State University for Negroes, a segregated school many Black Houstonians saw as a mixed blessing. It was renamed Texas Southern in 1951.

What the plaque says

Trinity United Methodist Church This congregation grew from a small mission organized in 1848 for the slave membership of the Houston Methodist Church (now first United Methodist Church). The Rev. Orceneth Fisher served as first pastor of the African mission, which was given a sanctuary of its own about 1851. On March 5, 1865, the congregation was organized officially by the Rev. Elias Dibble of the Mississippi Mission Conference. Initially known as First Church, Houston, Trinity Methodist Church grew to number 100 within the first year. In 1869 the cornerstone was laid for a sanctuary at 1408 Travis and Bell streets. Trinity Methodist Church has been a part of numerous significant events in the history of Houston, including the founding of Wiley College in 1873 and the organization of Texas Southern University in 1925. A number of leaders in Houston politics, education, and fraternal organizations have been members here. Throughout its history the congregation has been responsible for organizing other churches in Houston. One of the earliest black congregations in Houston, Trinity United Methodist Church has been located at this site since 1951. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emancipation Park — 0.3 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 0.9 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 1.6 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Rothko Chapel — 1.9 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Sam (Lightnin') Hopkins — steps away
• Eldorado Ballroom — 0.2 mi
• Jordan Grove Missionary Baptist Church — 0.3 mi
• The Legacy of Emancipation Park — 0.3 mi